Oxford

Recently I wrote about football, and about my obsession-inspired road trip to Liverpool. Another of my great interests is maths, and my next road trip was to Oxford - a place of significance to mathematicians.

Last Thursday I set off early in the morning to get the train, tube and bus combo to Oxford to visit my old buddy Derek Tan (El Dezzo). Dez and I did maths together at uni - which means we drank a shitload of coffee, listened to music, played pool and solved the odd differential equation, time permitting. He is now studying his PhD (or D Phil as they call it at Oxford) in mathematical biology. Something about pattern formation.

A Friendly Bus Driver

Bus drivers in London have a very bad reputation. My two Australian friends Jamie and Derrek are reduced to seething wrecks when they describe their interactions with the drivers. Luckily I had not taken a single bus 'round London up until the Oxford trip - but I had been warned. I cautiously approached the driver for the Victoria Station-Oxford bus journey, and asked politely for a return ticket. To my surprise he didn't bite my head off. Instead I had a good chat with him, getting a history lesson on Oxford and talked about his time working for the Airforce in Australia. This is just buttering me up for sure, so that my first "proper" London driver can upset me utterly

And On Our Left...

Derek has a mind like a steel trap - telephone numbers, dates and arbitrary facts get lodged inside his head. He could still remember my old phone number from Australia. He took me on a tour of Oxford, pointing out interesting facts about every other building. This architect did this or that, this shop was started in 1653 by a returning merchant named Lord so-and-so, this street has the largest number of architecture styles of any high-street in the UK... and so on. Dez was a goldmine of info about the long history of the place, all very interesting for a country boy who thinks that a church built in the thirties is ancient (that is the 1930s, not the 1530s).

It was good to drink coffee and talk about nerdy topics after ten months away from anything related to academia. Hell, one of my workmates is amazed when I can add up the cost of two pints and a G&T in my head (nine pounds!). Dez has also gotten into photography in a big way, so we had some fun running around with his shiny new digital SLR and collection of lenses, taking about 40 photos of a CCTV camera hidden on the bottom of a street lamp.

Back to Work

I stayed the night in Oxford, then caught the bus-tube-train combo back to Godalming in time for my lunch shift at the Inn. Back to the old routine. I am getting a little sick of the place, particularly as the bar is quite poorly managed, and the rostering is a bit of a mess. On Sunday I did from four in the afternoon until midnight without any breaks at all, constantly working because we were understaffed by one person (I was on my own from eight onwards) on a busy day.

I can't complain though. I origionally took the job so that I wouldn't spend any money and to kill time before I got my Irish visa. I have ended up saving a whole stack of cash, and am going to keep at it a couple more weeks, even though I have now got my Irish visa. With the money that I save I will be able to go straight to Spain and enjoy a summer of fun in the sun, before going to Ireland to get some savings for the next leg of my trip.

I have got back into my yoga the last week. My left hamstring is finally feeling good, though it is still at about 80 percent. The difference that yoga makes to my energy levels, both physical and mental is amazing. My body just won't let me get away without practicing for too long!